The recent revolution in technologies for dynamically sharing virtualizations of hardware resources, software, and information storage across networks has increased the reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency of computing. More specifically, the ability to provide virtual computing resources on demand through the advent of virtualization has enabled consumers of processing resources to flexibly structure their computing costs in response to immediately perceived computing needs. Such virtualizations allow customers to purchase processor cycles and related resources at the instant of demand, rather than buying or leasing fixed hardware in provisioning cycles that are dictated by the delays and costs of manufacture and deployment of hardware. Rather than depending on the accuracy of predictions of future demand to determine the availability of computing, users are able to purchase the use of computing resources on a relatively instantaneous as-needed basis.
In virtualized environments that provide computing resources on demand, however, difficulties and inflexibility still exist in the importation of data to and exportation of data from virtualized computing systems, such as in backup operations. Current solutions for importing and exporting large segments of data consist of cumbersome work-arounds that have proven frustratingly slow and unreliable. While access to computing power has become more flexible, the methods available to bring data to the computing process and export data from the computing process have not advanced to a satisfactory state.
While the technology described herein is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof are shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the disclosure to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present disclosure as defined by the appended claims.